Media Buying 2018 — Transparency at a Crossroads [REPORT]

November 14, 2018

The transparency debate and distrust between advertisers and media buying agencies has been a topic in C-suites since Jon Mandel's 2015 speech at the Association of National Advertisers' (ANA) annual media conference, yet ANA's work on transparency dates back to at least 2011. Interest took a new, unprecedented turn on October 10, 2018 when the ANA notified its members that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asked the ANA to inform its members about the investigation and to ask its members to consider cooperating with the FBI investigation if they believed they might have been defrauded by their agencies.

The purpose of this White Paper is to provide a historical perspective of the transparency issues and to outline the options that advertisers have to cooperate or not cooperate with the FBI.